It’s a fascinating phenomenon, that as soon as something gets defined in terms of health or education, the definition of “healthy” or “educated” gets steadily more ambitious and demanding. I struggle with this, given that I occasionally get credited as an expert because of this website, and I think all sex-positive education would benefit from a good hard look at the intimidation factor of experts and educators.

I posted ages ago about Leonore Tiefer’s great criticisms of the medicalization of sex and sexual dysfunction, and there is quite a lot of feminist sexuality literature that talks about professionalization and power. (Find anything criticizing Masters and Johnson, if you need a place to start.)

Lately though, I’ve been finding that books about education have a lot of similar insights. Convergence! I’ve been taking notes from books by John Holt, John Dewey, Maria Montessori, and so on, and labelling a lot of things “vagina deja vu.” (If you have books to recommend, by all means get in touch.)

My talk at the conference will be more focussed than this! Whenever I describe things here on the blog I get the urge to provide you with a complete set of relevant links. Come to the talk for a more straightforward narrative experience.